Electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, fuel cell vehicles, and the like are known as electrically powered vehicles configured to be capable of driving an electric motor for driving a vehicle using power stored in an on-vehicle power storage device represented by a secondary battery. For these electrically powered vehicles, configurations of charging an on-vehicle power storage device by a power supply external to a vehicle (hereinafter also simply referred to as an “external power supply”; further, charging of an on-vehicle power storage device by an external power supply will be also simply referred to as “external charging”) have been proposed.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2009-27774 (PTL 1) discloses a vehicle having an improved charging efficiency during external charging. The vehicle includes a battery that can be charged by an external power supply, a DC/DC converter that lowers a voltage from the battery and outputs it, an auxiliary battery that is charged by the output voltage of the DC/DC converter and supplies power to an auxiliary load, and a control device. The control device causes the DC/DC converter to operate continuously during operation of the vehicle, and causes the DC/DC converter to operate intermittently during external charging.
According to the vehicle, since the DC/DC converter is caused to operate intermittently during external charging, charging of a power storage device can be performed while suppressing loss during external charging (see PTL 1).